Midnight Train
by samanthabravo
Summary: Connor leaves Chicago. My first ChiMed drabble. Total stream of consciousness stuff.


_****A drabble****_

**Midnight Train**

He left town on the same train that had brought him to Chicago five years before. With each chug of its powerful engine; with each clank of its huge wheels over rusty metal tracks, the city's familiar skyline became smaller and further away. He had stationed himself at the rear window in the last car even though had promised himself once he climbed aboard that he wouldn't look backwards. Was he a glutton for punishment? Probably. A masochist? Most definitely. This city had taken far too much from him and yet he knew somehow, he'd never be able to truly leave it behind.

This tough city had robbed him of his parents, Robin, and now Ava. _Ava…_ That loss haunted him the most somehow. It made his chest ache and his lungs constrict. He had watched Ava slit her own throat, felt her crumple into his arms, heard the bloody knife clatter to the floor. He had carried her limp body into the OR and with his hands inside of her open chest, he had held her heart with his fingers as it ceased to beat. He heard the time called, heard the monitor's plaintive death cry, saw the flat red line on the screen. And still he hadn't wanted to give up. He couldn't. Not until it fully sunk into his clinical, conscious mind that she was never coming back from this. _Ever._

Questions plagued him - ones to which he expected no answer.

Would Ava be remembered as the obsessed homicidal woman she became or the brilliant doctor she had started out as? Would people give her the benefit of the doubt when they heard about her story?

Would it have been so hard for him to let her skip town like she had wanted to? Why had he prosecuted her for every real and imagined wrong for most of the duration of their relationship? Couldn't he have been just a little forgiving? She was ill, she had lost her way, become so different than that ambitious, driven woman he had once known who would do anything to save a patient, but maybe it hadn't even been her fault.

There was that niggling thought too … _Had he tried hard enough to save her? Worse, had he pushed her to this?_

He scrubbed his hands down his stubbly face. His eyes burned. He had always allowed himself see the very worst in her. It was so much easier to take a hard line with her than to admit that from the moment he first saw her standing under the glow of those stark hospital lights, that he had wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anyone or anything.

He remembered that day well; _too_ well. He remembered how his tongue got so thick in his mouth, and all he could do was stare dubiously at her for the briefest of moments. He had immediately gone on the offensive with her though. He had immediately pushed her down and pushed her away. He was a stubborn coward, terrified to let anyone inside. That was both the simplest and most complicated answer.

Ava had challenged him, made him weaker and somehow also stronger. She had made him to want to become a better doctor, and she had put up with a hell of a lot of his bullshit. He could have been better - kinder, gentler, much more understanding. Maybe if he had been, she wouldn't be lying in the cold sterile hospital morgue right now.

He wondered if her family would come out to the US to claim her body. He wondered if the image of her alone and lifeless, eyelids forever shuttered, blood staining her clothes and face, would ever cease to haunt him.

As the city lights soon faded away into small pinpricks, he finally closed his eyes. When he did, he saw Ava. He saw her as he wished to always remember her - saucily smiling at him, eyes twinkling, daring him to best her.

An empty, hollow feeling started to seep into his body then and he allowed it to come; to coat his soul in a thick block of ice as he valiantly tried to push out these feelings; to numb himself to all emotion. Still, the truth could not be denied: the hardest truth; the most hurtful truth...

The swift realization that he had loved Ava Bekker … and now it was _too late._

**THE END**

**A/N:** So I wrote this admittedly tragic little piece in a weird way to sort of make sense of the last season. Rhekker were/are my ChiMed OTP and I am just devastated by their very unhappy ending. The writers did us so wrong, guys. I am probably not even going to watch the show anymore because of this! I just want you to know though that I will be writing longer Rhekker fan fics in the future and they will all feature an alive and sane Ava!

Thanks for reading! Let us cry, but then remember our babies in better times!


End file.
